RAGS Project: Gender Discrimination a Key Focus

October 2012

Snapshots from the SAI RAGS Project classroom workshops in India. From left: 1) Participants in Bangalore during a breakout session; 2) Group photo from the training in New Delhi on October 12 where participants hold up an SAI banner that was made by women being mentored by the organization Kaurageous; 3) during a breakout session at the training on October 12 in New Delhi, participants theorize a recruitment policy that combats gender discrimination. View more photos from the trainings at www.sa-intl.org/indiarags. Photo credit: Rishi Sher Singh.

Starting September 2012, four classroom trainings have taken place in three cities in India: Tirupur, September 26; Bangalore, October 9; and New Delhi, October 12 and 13. The theme of the training, "Management Systems to Address Gender Discrimination," focused on the ready-made garment industry, and other related industries.

The classroom trainings are part of the UK aid -funded RAGS Project. Funding from this project helps to subsidize the trainings to make them affordable for participants from supplier factories. To date, an estimated 80 attendees have participated in the classroom trainings, representing 24 supplier factories.

"In India, most of the women in the lowest strata of the society continue to not receive their fair share of development, and equal opportunity might not be available to them in factories," said SAI India Project Director Rishi Sher Singh. "These classroom trainings are important because they bring factory managers to start thinking differently about what equal opportunity in a workplace looks like and to move away from gender based stereotypes."

The curriculum for the training was developed over the course of 2011 and 2012. Findings from the multi-stakeholder advisory committees (MACs) that took place in New Delhi and Tirupur in November 2011, feedback from project partners and field level research has served as the foundation for the curriculum. In May 2012, a three-day multi-stakeholder workshop was convened in New Delhi to share the operations details of the project and gather feedback from brands, trainers and industry experts.

Classroom trainings will continue until March 2013. Four additional classroom trainings are scheduled for 2012:

Tirupur, November 2

Bangalore, November 6

Bangalore, December 7

New Delhi, December 11

Special thanks to PGC Switcher for hosting the training in Tirupur on September 26 and Shahi Exports for hosting on October 13 in New Delhi.

To view more photos from the training, visit sa-intl.org/indiarags. For more information and to register for trainings, please contact SAI India Project Director Rishi Sher Singh -Rishi@sa-intl.org.